Internet as a Professional Conferencing Arena

The simulation profession is spread all over the world and supports
hundreds of models used to train and evaluate military operations
and personnel. These are developed by the individual services,
national laboratories, federal research and development centers,
and commercial contractors. In this environment it is easy for
development teams to become isolated and uninformed about what is
happening in other areas. This results in duplicate work and
duplicate mistakes which degrade the quality of training that can
be provided and increase the costs born by the government, a.k.a.
the tax-payers.

In recent years several simulations have emerged as the primary
training tools. These are organized under a program known as
FAMSIM (Family of Simulations) at U.S. Army STRICOM. These have
been or are being integrated to produce more realistic training
environments. The ground (CBS), air (AWSIM), logistics (CSSTSS),
electronic warfare (JECEWSI), intelligence (TACSIM), navy (ENWGS),
and marine (MTWS) simulations will be networked to provide a single
environment in which the strengths of each are joined together to
produce an electronic battlefield which can not be replicated in
any other way (figure 1). As the idea of interoperability between
simulations grew the need for sharing knowledge, experience, and
information increased. Unfortunately the funds and time to
exchange this type of information continues to shrink. Schedules
are so tight that it is often impossible for professional
simulation builders to take the time to enhance their technical
skills by exposure to conferences, courses, and meetings. Some
method has to be found to keep these people current in their skills
with limited budgets.

One method that is used is sending a single representative to
conferences and meetings. This person is then expected to bring
the new ideas back to the project and brief others. In practice
this often degenerates to discussions with close associates over
lunch or "around the water cooler". The time to make formal
presentations and the fact that many attendees do not have the
speaking ability to convey the information conspire to diffuse good
intentions.

The Electronic Conference on Constructive Training Simulation
(Elecsim) was conceived as an alternative to physical attendance at
a conference. Given the global dispersion of simulation
practitioners the conference was designed to bring quality
presenters together with the dispersed audience at a virtual
conference more easily and more often that could be done
physically. We also hoped that the unique format would attract
people who usually shun conferences as either uninteresting or
inefficient.

Elecsim was hosted on a single internet node and all information
exchange was handled via E-Mail. Papers, graphics, and software
were submitted by the authors and stored in a library. This
library was made accessible to anyone with E-Mail access to
internet, including dial-up users, CompuServe, America OnLine,
Prodigy, and GEnie. All attendees then requested and received
documents from this library. Finally, conversations between the
authors and audience and among members of the audience was
facilitated or mediated by the list server software. These tools
allowed us to reconstruct the primary aspects of a professional
conference within the internet domain.

2.0 Organization

The original idea for an internet based E-Mail conference was born
from the need of members of our simulation project to be
knowledgeable about events transpiring in other parts of the
simulation world. Having participated in several mailing lists and
requested documents from list process libraries, it was a natural
step for us to combine the recognized need and the network method
to form a new application for list servers. Initial research into
the idea led us to Dr. Tom O'Haver at the University of Maryland
who had conducted such a conference for chemistry educators. Dr.
O'Haver was able to provide background information and the
locations of publicly available software to aid in the venture.

2.1 Selecting and Installing the Software

The three most common packages for managing a mailing list and
library are Majordomo,
Listproc, and FTPmail. Studying all three
of these we determined that Majordomo best fit our needs. Though
Listproc seemed to provide more power and flexibility, the
Majordomo commands were more intuitive. Since the simulation
community is dominated by scientists, mathematicians, and military
officers we wanted to provide as short a learning curve as possible
in introducing them to internet conferencing.

Majordomo was acquired via anonymous ftp and installed on a local
area network of Sun Sparc workstations running SunOS 4.1.3 and
sendmail. We then spent two to three weeks becoming familiar with
the software and establishing mailing lists similar to those we
intended to use on the internet node. Experimentation in this mode
allowed us to make mistakes without impacting users who expect to
have access to their internet accounts at all times. We created a
new account and group to own and operate Majordomo. This isolated
the mailing system from normal users who did not want to risk
sharing their work with the outside world. Working on our own
machine we also had unlimited access to root privileges to create
users and groups, change aliases, and rebuild the Network
Information Service (NIS).

In reading the Majordomo instructions and examples all steps in
setting up the system are not immediately clear. A reference
language has developed among Majordomo users which is not common to
those uninitiated to list servers and sendmail. As a result the
writer sometimes slips into this language and becomes incoherent to
new users. Several trials and errors were required before the
meaning of some of the instructions were clear. As an example, one
operating constraint of Majordomo that was omitted from the
instructions was that all mailing lists must have lower case names.
We started out using "Elecsim" and received several failure
messages before being corrected by members of the Majordomo users
group and changing it to "elecsim".

The basic architecture begins with a directory identified as the
home of the mailing lists. Under this, individual lists and
document repositories are built. The Majordomo configuration file
identifies these directories as the place to look for requested
documents and command scripts which must be run. The mailing list
itself is an alias. All incoming mail addressed to "listserv" is
redirected to the command scripts which transmit documents from the
library in response to the senders requests. All mail to a name
such as "elecsim" is redirected to the file which contains a list
of all E-Mail addresses subscribed to the conference. This is a
mail reflector, sending copies of incoming messages to everyone on
the list.

Once the software was operating on the local machines we downloaded
it to the internet host and installed it there. The system
administrator supplied the root password and endured a few
inconveniences as we created new users and aliases on his machine.
Majordomo was completely installed and configured via a dial-up
connection to the host, not once did our fingers or eyes touch this
machine. This demonstrates the lack of geographic limitations even
in creating and operating a list server of this type.

Unfortunately, differences between the internet machine and our
local machines resulted in additional problems. The most annoying
was the incorrect format for the sendmail aliases for mailing
lists. The Majordomo distribution comes with two different sets of
examples for the format of these aliases. The one we chose
initially and tested on the local machines worked only for local
network mail. Again, recourse to the Majordomo users group exposed
and solved this problem.

Once running, the system manager changed the root password leaving
us with our own user accounts, including the new majordomo account
which owned the mailing lists and software. In this configuration
we discovered a characteristic of SunOS 4.1.3 which we had missed
when operating as root. Mail sent by local users of the internet
machine to the majordomo account change the owner of the mailing
list to "daemon.daemon" with "-rw-rw-r--" privilege. Once this
happens neither the majordomo account nor our own accounts can edit
the list and make manual changes, though sendmail is still free to
work with the list.

2.2 Conference Standards

Surmounting the software and network hurdles we were free to move
on to issues concerning the conference itself. The first step was
to establish standards for the information exchange that would
allow all E-Mail users access to the document library. Though many
academic works are distributed on the internet in PostScript
format, this limits the readers to those with access to PostScript
printers or document display translators and our targeted audience
was much more varied than this. To serve them, we chose to store
text and graphics in separate files with different formats. ASCII
was the natural choice for text since it can be displayed on any
screen and loaded into all word processing packages. We chose
UUencoded GIF files for graphics. GIF viewers for almost any
computer abound on the internet, CompuServe, AOL, and Prodigy at a
very reasonable price (often free). A list of anonymous ftp
locations for these software packages was taken from Dr. O'Haver's
chemistry conference and provided to all participants. Authors
also needed screen capture or format conversion packages to get
graphics from DrawPerfect, PowerPoint, MacDraw, etc. into GIF
format. Again these are widely available for all common hardware
platforms. During the preparation phase none of the authors
complained of the inability to produce graphics in this format.
Had any software executables been submitted these too would have
been UUencoded for delivery via E-Mail. UUencoding reads in any
file and produces an ASCII output file which UUdecode can then
translate back into the original file. This works for text,
graphics, binaries, etc. Once encoded into ASCII the file can be
delivered via E-Mail without being corrupted by the delivery
mechanism.

All papers and graphics were submitted via E-Mail to verify their
transportability before placing them in the Elecsim library.

2.3 Finding Authors

Since internet conferencing is still an experimental venture we
opted to make attendance free to all simulation professionals and
students. We further extended invitations to administrators and
internet watchers who had other interests in the conferencing
process. In order to make the idea a reality we contacted the
major players in the field; described the idea; and invited them to
join by presenting papers. The response was almost completely
favorable with all but one project agreeing to submit a paper. The
need to build an event of this type without a precedent practically
dictated that the papers be accumulated by invitation rather than
an open call to the community. And, since two days were being
allocated for discussions of each paper, it was not possible to
accept the dozens of papers that one would find at an event like
the Winter Simulation Conference (WSC). Therefore, we were boxed
in by the threat of paper flood on one hand and a drought on the
other.

The papers presented came from academia, industry, and government.
It was very encouraging that academics who have a vested interest
in publishing their works in "credible" journals and conference
proceedings were eager to be a part of this conference. These
cited the educational promise of the idea and the possibility of
future recognition. As word of the conference spread we had
requests from several others to be included. These we accepted as
alternates should any of the invited papers cancel, which a few
did. By the time the schedule was finalized we had papers from the
following organizations:

University of Virginia,

University of Central Florida,

U.S. Army STRICOM,

Naval Research Laboratory,

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory,

Oak Ridge National Laboratory,

Los Alamos National Laboratory,

MITRE,

Mystech Associates,

SAIC,

Loral,

MRJ,

Rolands & Associates, and

VisiCom Labs.

2.4 Enlisting Sponsors

In approaching professional associations with the idea of sponsoring
the conference we found ourselves alternately attractive and
repulsive to them. To some this idea captured their attention and
motivated them to participate in the first of what could be many
successful conferences in the future. To others the conference as
a flash in the pan spawned by the current excitement about the
internet. Typically, large, established societies had developed
methods for planning and sponsoring conferences which were not
conducive to the speed and organization possible in the electronic
environment. Championing Elecsim to these was almost impossible,
but hopefully the success of several such conferences will cause
them to reevaluate their position. To our surprise, the opposition
was not to the professional credibility of the conference itself
but to the electronic nature of it. To quote the Vice-President of
one large computer organization, "If the participants do not come
together physically it is not a bonafide conference and we are not
interested in being a part of it".

In the end our sponsors were :

The Society for Computer Simulation,

The Military Applications Section,
Operations Research Society of America, and

The International Journal in Computer Simulation.

Each of these printed an announcement, free of charge, in one of
their publications. Separately the Military Operations Research
Society agreed to publish the announcement even though they do not
sponsor conferences other than those which they organize
themselves. The primary contribution of society sponsorship was
credibility and free announcement space. The electronic format
negated the need for assistance with funding and the organization
of hotel reservations, meeting rooms, airline fares, mailing
announcements, and the publication of proceedings.

2.5 Promotion

The primary form of conference promotion is usually the publication
of announcements in journals and newsletters. But, for an
electronic conference we found that other, less traditional,
announcements drew more registrants. Electronic mail is an
excellent medium for announcing electronic conferences. We began
by compiling a list of all e-mail addresses from the business cards
of those with whom we had professional contact. Then we broadcast
the announcement to all accounts on the Defense Modeling and
Simulation Information System (MSIS) and the Army Software Reuse
internet nodes. We also posted the announcement on the MSIS Gopher
which lists upcoming simulation events. These gave us a
distribution of over 1900 people who were specifically or generally
related to the conference topic.

The next stop was the USENET news group "comp.simulation" which is
distributed all over the world. Announcements here are also picked
up and added to the monthly Electronic Simulation Digest. The
announcement was then sent to the "Calendar of Events" section of
IEEE Computer, IEEE Scanner, Communications of the ACM, Distributed
Interactive Simulation - Joint Newsletter, Issues in Air Force
Simulation and Analysis, Washington Technology, and Internet World.
Following the conference, papers and presentations were prepared
describing the event and its benefits.

Once a participant is registered we continued to promote the
conference to him/her. Big numbers on the attendance board meant
nothing if the people registered did not participate and come to
understand and appreciate the usefulness of the format. To remain
in their minds we published an "Elecsim News Update" every two
weeks which provided helpful hints on using the list server,
introductions to the authors and topics, and descriptions on new
documents and graphics added to the library. A living schedule was
published along with the announcement and was continuously updated
as authors changed the name of their papers or alternate papers
were added. The library also included documents containing author
biographies, paper abstracts, and attractive military graphics
images. All of these were living documents right up to the start
of the conference. Changes were driven by the dynamic nature of an
experimental conference and by our desire to demonstrate the
flexibility of the format.

3.0 Execution

In creating a mailing list and the associated library, Majordomo
allows several different types of access. The primary difference
among them is the level at which membership and information is
controlled. The loosest of these is the "auto" list where every
subscription request is accepted automatically. The most strict is
the "private" list where only members of the list may access
information for it, and all membership requests must be authorized
by the list owner. Between these extremes lie the "open" and the
"closed" lists.

Elecsim was handled as an "auto" list in which any user could
perform any function. No abuses of this power were detected, but
"open" lists will probably be used in the future. By the time the
conference began we had over 400 participants, 15 papers, and 2
background essays.

Upon registration every user received an information package which
provided more details about the event. It described the steps for
proceeding in conference participation and the internet locations
for graphic viewers and uuencoders. As we mentioned, Majordomo was
selected for its simplicity and we believe this approach paid off
in users' ability to instantly begin accessing the conference. Few
participants requested further help in operating the list server,
and only a hand-full unsubscribed before the conference began.
Following the conference, participants were asked to fill out an
evaluation form. These have not been analyzed yet but the return
rate was very high.

The system was setup such that the list owner received error
messages regarding mail for that list. These included failures to
subscribe or the transmission of documents to non-existent e-mail
addresses. On the other hand problems with the list server itself
were sent to the owner of the majorodmo software. This created a
clean break in dividing responsibilities and helped in locating
errors during the set-up phase.

As registration and the conference unfolded it became very obvious
that a large number of the participants were internet and e-mail
novices. They made very basic mistakes, like not knowing their own
e-mail address. Those who use the internet actively, taking
advantage of tools like Gopher and Mosaic, often forget that they
form an elite among all who have internet access. Some of these
elite wanted, and almost demanded, access to Elecsim materials via
anonymous ftp or Mosaic. They did not understand that the
conference was geared to the lowest common denominator - electronic
mail. This may seem like "internet low tech" but it was
intentional in order to reach the greatest number of people. The
experiment was not in internet technologies, but in the ability of
internet to serve people in intellectual need.

During the conference all communication was geared around a few
e-mail addresses (figure 2). As detailed "[email protected]"
served as the point of registration and document retrieval. The
documents included information on conference functionality and the
technical papers on constructive simulation. The address
"[email protected]" was the mail reflector which allowed any
individual to address comments to everyone attending the
conference. Traffic to this address was extensive and could at
times bury participants in e-mail. "[email protected]"
served as the help desk. This reached the conference organizers
who could answer questions not covered in the online documents. It
was also the point of contact for providing comments and possible
improvements, which were received and appreciated. Finally each
author could be reached at his/her personal e-mail address which
was provided in each of the papers being presented. Participants
were instructed to send questions on each paper to the author. The
author would then digest all questions, provide answers, and post
a single response to "[email protected]". Directing questions to
the authors eliminated a few hundred messages from everyone's
mailbox.

Figure 2. Map of Mail Delivery Mechanism

Finally, we should point out that the creation and execution of the
conference was carried out without ever sitting down at the
keyboard of the host machine in Falls Church, Virginia. Nor was
the responsibility of organizing it allowed to interfere with our
regular work and travel schedules. As a result all of the work
described above was carried out from Manassas, Virginia; Kileen,
Texas; Orlando, Florida; Frankfurt, Germany; and Seoul, Korea.

4.0 Mistakes

In organizing the conference we made several mistakes which we will
not repeat in the future. These are
enumerated here so that others may avoid them as well.

Perl was not installed correctly on the host machine. It seems
there had been little call for Perl until
Majordomo came along. This resulted in Majordomo failing because
certain mandatory files could not be
found. These types of problems can be resolved readily by
referring to the O'Reilly book on Perl.

Lower case list names. We learned through trial and error that
all Majordomo lists must be lower case letters.

In the announcement we requested that people provide the e-mail
address which they wished to subscribe.
"subscribe elecsim "
This proved to be a problem for some users who did not know their
e-mail address. If the address is not provided in the subscription
request Majorodomo will use the address that the message came from.
This should have been the advertised version: "subscribe elecsim";
with exceptions being handled by the list owner upon request. Some
people also used their real name according to the format of the
Listproc software.

Used the address "listserv" for Majorodmo. This caused
confusion with people who had used Listproc under the "listserv"
name. These were the users who tended to provide their human names
instead of their e-mail addresses. Other lists commonly use
"majordom" or "majordomo". Something unique to Majordomo, but
indicative of the functionality would be preferable, such as
"library", "registration", or "infodesk". This may also reduce
confusion with the name of the list (next item).

People confused the functionality of the "listserv" and
"elecsim" addresses. The first handled registration and document
delivery. The second was a conference call to all registrants. As
soon as the existence of the "elecsim" address was announced people
began to use it to request library documents. In the future this
name may be withheld until the very beginning of the conference
when it will be used.

The "wrapper" program may be owned by any account that is a
trusted user to sendmail. The daemon account is standard for this
or the account which owns the Majordomo software. We selected the
daemon account but found later that when adding e-mail addresses to
the mailing list the ownership of the file was given to
daemon.daemon. The protections were "-rw-rw-r--" which prevented
other users such as majordomo and the list owner from editing the
list to correct mistakes or remove incorrect addresses. It would
have been better for the majordomo account to own the "wrapper'
program.

Journal Typesetting Errors. Journals editors tend to see
character strings as dictionary words and computer terms may prompt
them to approximate to the nearest English equivalent. Therefore,
"[email protected]" became "[email protected]". Upon
detection it was too late to change the copy that had been sent to
the printer. Therefore, this new address was added to the list of
aliases which invoke the Majordomo software.

More Alternate Papers. Though the conference consisted of only
15 papers, most of those invited, we expected some of the authors
to cancel their presentations because of other business
commitments. To cover this we had two alternate papers in reserve.
This number was too small for comfort. At one point four papers
looked like they would not be written, though in the end we lost
only two. For future conferences we plan to have a reserve to
cover a 25% paper cancellation rate.

5.0 Benefits

By far the greatest benefit of the conference is the ability to
extend participation to people who are otherwise beyond the reach
of traditional conferences. Attendees came from 16 countries:
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany,
Great Britain, Ireland, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, Spain,
Sweden, Turkey, and the United States (figure 3). Evaluations
solicited after the conference indicated that a large number of the
400+ participants could not have attended the conference physically
because of schedule conflicts and budgetary issues. The fact that
these inaccessible people participated indicates that the potential
to reduce duplicated simulation development efforts as a result of
isolation does exist.

Figure 3. Elecsim Conference Participants

Through exposure and the ease of electronic communication,
relationships were developed that might not have been in a physical
conference. These may lead to a greater degree of synergy and
cooperation between the parties involved. For some, learning to
use Internet for this conference will open this powerful form of
communication for use in other areas. Though many had access to
internet and e-mail they had not used it until the conference
provided an event which motivated them.

Since electronic conferences can be held on a much smaller budget
and shorter time-lines, it is possible to convene them on
specialized subjects on a regular basis. Physical conferences must
serve a broad audience in order to attract sufficient attendance to
cover the high costs involved. Electronic conferences have the
potential to renew people's knowledge base more frequently since
they are not tied to traditional budgetary constraints which
dictate that individuals may attend only one or two conferences per
year. An individual may participate in a new conference every week
and it have little negative impact on their productivity.

Finally, the electronic domain is a great leveling tool. Those who
are normally quiet in a public setting are free to speak as
forcefully as the boisterous, who are in turn muted to the volume
of the rest of the audience. In an electronic conference no one is
white, black, blind, deaf, or handicapped. All participate on even
ground.

6.0 Future Plans

With these conferences we hope to contribute to the growing
electronic community. But, we want to facilitate the exchange of
in-depth technical information in a more structured format than is
accomplished via e-mail and newsgroups alone, which are much less
formal and tend to serve more immediate needs than professional
growth and development.

A moderated conference could be created which runs continuously,
much as educational television does. The moderator could organize
submitted and accepted papers; publish the schedule; and host the
server software. Such a project would require much more commitment
than can be done via volunteers.

An electronic conference may be scheduled in conjunction with a
traditional conference in order to encourage more detailed
discussions of the topic by any segment of the conference's
physical participants. Such a supplement may also provide an
alternative for distributing proceedings and collecting evaluations
and suggestions. The traditional conference format has been shaped
by experience and the limits of serving large audiences. Some of
these limits can be overcome with electronic supplementals.

Future electronic simulation conferences will attempt to use more
of the internet tools available. The heart of the conference will
remain in e-mail until more than that is available to simulation
professionals around the world. But, e-mail can be supplemented by
scheduled live talk using Internet Relay Chat (IRC). This portion
of the conference would be limiting in that all participants must
be able to access their computers during that time period all
around the world.

We would also like to create a paper that is an MPEG movie. This
can be distributed via e-mail and viewed by the freeware MPEG
viewers that are beginning to proliferate. Such a paper will
probably be an exception in the 1995 conferences but may become
more common later. The same may be attempted with audio files.

The MBone could provide a combination of live talk and movies,
allowing at least one-way transmission of papers being presented.
This format is also very limiting in time and in hardware/software
capabilities on the receiving end.

We believe that a VR conference may be of interest, whether live or
recorded. Something similar to Carl Loeffler's Networked VR Art
Museum out of Carnegie Mellon University is possible. Though
exciting technologically it is also limiting and its benefit over
mail and some of the other methods needs to be demonstrated.

Though we like to present grand plans for our own future, we
suspect that reaching a wider audience with the current technology
is more valuable that adding video, audio, and VR. We will strive
to create and encourage the use of electronic conferences in more
professions and on more specialized topics. Intending to reach
people who are being missed by traditional conferences rather than
trying to impress those few who are able to experiment on the
leading edge.

Roger D. Smith is a Principal Simulation Engineer with Mystech
Associates. He is responsible for developing simulations and tools
to support the training missions of US and Allied forces. These
have included air and ground combat models, intelligence collection
and analysis algorithms, after action review systems, and
simulation management tools. He has an M.S. in Statistics from
Texas Tech University
and a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from the
University of Southern Colorado.